Power Standards & Common Assessments

1. Together Everyone Achieves More Power Standards & Common Assessments at McGavock Elementary Stacey Elkins, Literacy Coach

2. Basic Facts • Consider These Facts: • 5.6 instructional hours per day x 180 days x 13 years = 13,104 total hours of K-12 instruction. • McREL identified 200 standards and 3,093 benchmarks in national and state level documents. • Classroom teachers estimated a need for 15,465 hours to teach them all.

3. What is a Power Standard? • Prioritized standards • Essential for student success • In each grade level • In life • On all high-stakes assessments

4. How Powerful Practices Work Together Effective Teaching Strategies By: Robert Smelser

5. Priority Standards Steps • Step 1: Make initial selections based on professional judgment. • Step 2: Analyze state test requirements and school and district test data. • Step 3: Modify selections as needed. • Step 4: Vertically align standards PK-12. • Step 5: Acquire feedback from all sites. • Step 6: Revise, publish, distribute • By: Larry Ainsworth

6. How to Select Power Standards • Determine to start – reading or math • Count the number of standards • Decide on a reduction target (from 60 to 30 or 20) Criteria: Endurance Leverage Readiness for Next Level

7. Take 10 minutes to determine subject, count standards, and decide reduction number

8. Preliminary Determination • By yourself quietly (not group work): • Select your favorite standards – number determined by the number you just decided • You will have 10 minutes to do this.

9. Preliminary Determination • As a group: • By dot-voting – determine which standards get the highest number of individual votes. • Take 15 minutes to do this. • Type or write them on a separate piece of paper so that only your top votes are seen. • This is still preliminary!

10. Discussion • As a group, advocate to add or delete some. **If you add one, then remove another! • Try to stay in your target number area!

11. 4 nine-weeks • Divide the Power Standards into the nine-weeks. • Estimate the amount of time devoted to each. • Make adjustments to standards – add and delete if necessary • ***Allow for time in the 9-weeks for assessments!

12. Chart Paper • Put Power Standards on Chart Paper by nine-weeks. • Are they aligned across the grade levels? • Do they match the TCAP standards? • Now, start back at the beginning with the other subject!

13. Common assessments

14. Power of COMMON Assessments “Schools with the greatest improvements in student achievement consistently used common assessments.” • – Douglas Reeves

15. Formative vs. Summative Assessments • Formative: • Immediate feedback • Current level of student understanding • Administered several times • Summative: • Final measure to determine if learning goals are met

16. Common Assessments • They are formative & summative • Important point • Developed COLLABORATIVELY • Incorporate each team’s collective wisdom

17. What are Common Formative Assessments? • Items designed to match the level of rigor indicated in the targeted Priority Standards. • A blend of item types, including selected-response (multiple choice, true/false, matching) AND constructed-response (short- or extended) • Student results analyzed in grade-level or course-specific Data Teams to guide instructional planning and delivery • Ainsworth & Viegut

18. 10 Steps to creating a quality common formative assessment!

19. Laying the Foundation:Steps 1-6 • Step 1: Select Important Instructional Topic • Step 2: Identify Matching Priority Standards • Step 3: “Unwrap” Selected Priority Standards • Step 4: Create Graphic Organizer • Step 5: Determine the Big Ideas • Step 6: Write the Essential Questions

20. Creating the Assessment: Steps 7-10 • Step 7: Write Selected-Response Items • Step 8: Write Constructed-Response Items (extended or short) • Step 9: Create Scoring Guide for Constructed-Response Items • Step 10: Write Essential Questions – Big Idea Directions

21. Step 1: Pick One Topic • Pick one topic from 1st nine-weeks • One reading • One math • Ainsworth suggests important topic for about a month of instruction. • For example: Reading Comprehension (Main Idea, Supporting Details, Inferences, and Generalizations)

22. Step 2: Identify Matching Priority Standards • Find the standards that go with that topic • Example: • 5.2.3 Recognize main ideas presented in texts and provide evidence that supports those ideas. • 5.2.4 Draw inferences, conclusions, or generalizations about text and support them with textual evidence and prior knowledge. • 5.2.5 Contrast facts, supported inferences, and opinions in text.

23. Step 3: “Unwrap” Priority Standards • Underline key concepts (important nouns and noun phrases) • Circle the skills (the verbs) in each one • Example: • 5.2.3 RECOGNIZE main ideas presented in texts and PROVIDE evidence that supports those ideas.

24. Step 4: Create a Graphic Organizer • “Unwrapped” Concepts From Targeted Power (Priority) Standards • THIS IS WHAT STUDENTS NEED TO KNOW!

25. Step 4: Create a Graphic Organizer • “Unwrapped” Skills with Approximate Bloom’s Taxonomy Levels • WHAT STUDENTS NEED TO BE ABLE TO DO

26. Step 5: Determine Topical Big Ideas • Main ideas must be supported with evidence from text and supporting details. • We draw conclusions and make generalizations from what we read and from our own experiences. • Knowing the differences between facts, opinions, and inferences helps you make your own decisions about what you read.

27. Step 6: Write Essential Questions • Must correspond with Big Ideas • How do you know if your main idea is really the main idea? (Main ideas must be supported with evidence from text and supporting details.) • What are conclusions and generalizations? How do we arrive at them? (We draw conclusions and make generalizations from what we read and from our own experiences.)

28. Step 6: continued • Facts, opinions, inferences! What’s the difference, and why should we know? (Knowing the differences between facts, opinions, and inferences helps you make your own decisions about what you read.)

29. Step 7: Selected-Response • Multiple-Choice • Question is directly correlated to “unwrapped” concept, skill, and level of Bloom’s Taxonomy • (Level 2) RECOGNIZE (main idea) • Student Directions: Choose the best answer from the answer choices. • What is the main idea of this tale? (level 2) • Two frogs accidentally jumped into a pail of milk. • The little frog lived because he didn’t give up. • Milk can be churned into butter with enough effort.

30. Step 7: Selected-Response • True/False • Question is directly correlated to “unwrapped” concept, skill, and level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. • (Level 4) DRAW (inferences, conclusions, generalizations) Student Directions: Write T or F in the space provided. (Level 4) ______ The little frog knew the milk would turn into butter if he kept paddling. ______ The little frog hoped that if he kept paddling, he would live.

31. Step 8: Extended-Response • Question is directly correlated to “unwrapped” concepts, skills, and levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. • (Level 4) – DRAW (inferences, conclusions, generalizations) • (Level 5) – SUPPORT (inferences, conclusions with text evidence, prior knowledge) This tale best illustrates which one of the following generalizations: (Level 4) Danger can show up in the most ordinary places. Events sometimes take a surprising turn if you refuse to quit. Everyone fails some of the time.

32. Step 8: Extended-Response Item Student Directions: Write one or more paragraphs defending your answer choice for the multiple-choice question above. State your choice and three reasons to support it, using examples from the tale, “A Bucket of Trouble.” Write a concluding sentence to summarize or support your choice. Your writing will be scored using the criteria listed on the Constructed-Response Scoring Guide. (Level 5)

33. Step 9: Create Scoring Guide • Proficient • States answer choice • Supports answer choice with three examples from tale • Writes one or more paragraphs • Writes concluding sentence that summarizes or supports answer choice • **Then create the remaining levels of the scoring guide: Advanced, Progressing, and Beginning

34. Strive for Objective Language • Language that is specific • (Avoid words like “some, few, good, many, most, little, creative,” etc.) • Language that is measurable • Language that is observable • Language that is understandable • Language that is matched to task directions

35. Step 10: Evaluate Student Understanding of Big Ideas • Students will respond to the teacher’s Essential Questions with the Big Ideas stated in their own words. • Responses can be quickly evaluated using the provided generic scoring guide (in your supporting documents).

36. Step 10: Evaluate Student Understanding of Big Ideas Conversation: What are our roadblocks? What do you see as easy to implement? What will we need more PD on?